


The Lower Atherton Mystery

by lost_spook



Category: The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
Genre: Detective Fever, Gen, POV First Person, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a case to be solved, roses to be grown - and Sergeant Cuff finds himself being immortalised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lower Atherton Mystery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RR_Duscan (damozel)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/damozel/gifts).



> With many thanks to Persiflage for the speedy beta!! <3

_Taken from the notebooks of Frederick Alderton Moore, reporter for the East London Evening Chronicle & Advertiser, Thursday 18th September 1845._

 

Since the advent of the perilous sickness that has swept the nation, known to its victims simply as ‘detective fever’, our attention has been correspondingly fixed on the few fascinating figures whose public lives are spent detecting crimes, while the rest of us, mere neophytes follow their business from afar. What manner of men are these, the reader naturally wonders, who engage in the search for Truth and dare to act as the hands of Justice?

The humble writer of this article, having been granted privileged access to one of the best known of these ‘detectives’, will try to answer that question, following the exploits of the celebrated Sergeant Cuff as he unravels his latest Horrifying case: the murder of Miss Lucy Hellings of Lower Atherton.

Arriving to meet the man at his home – a quite ordinary, modern terraced house, displaying no signs of the greatness of its chief inhabitant – I was met first by a stern-faced housekeeper, who told me that Sergeant Cuff was to be found in the small back garden, and then duly warned me that I shouldn’t likely get any sense out of him while he was busy with his roses.

Undeterred, however, I made my way into the garden, where I found him: a tall, gaunt, unprepossessing figure, who brought to mind something skeletal, with the melancholy face that one supposes is natural for a man who has spent his life facing the darker side of his fellow mortals. I stepped forward and made my introductions; then proceeded to ask him what seemed to be the most pressing concern of his current business. The Great Man considered this for a while, and then, taking me into his confidence, said that he feared that there would be more destruction before the summer was over.

Naturally, I was struck by such a grim pronouncement and begged him for more details to share with my readers. He paused, smoking his pipe for a little longer, and said, gesturing, at the rather sad, shadowed roses growing by the garden wall, “Green fly, you see.” He then went on to talk at some length at the sad difficulties of growing roses in the smoke and damp of the city.

“But perhaps you meant something quite different,” he said, and I noted what might be a gleam of humour in his eyes. “Now, that matter’s not so difficult. If only it were.”

Beyond that I could elicit no further elaboration of his meaning; he merely sighed and shook his head at me, but I was not to be discouraged. I went on to ask him instead if he found it a great sacrifice. He chewed on the end of his pipe before saying that he thought not, and that it had been harder for Mrs Cuff, which was why she had decided long since that such an existence did not suit her and gone to live with her sister in Surrey. It was good country for the roses, he added.

I endeavoured once more to ask him about the tragic and brutal murder of poor Miss Hellings who – as our readers will no doubt recall – was the unfortunate young housemaid who had been _strangled to death_ by an unknown assailant after returning home to visit her mother.

He said again only that that was no mystery. I protested at this statement, reminding him of the tale of Lord H– who had so mysteriously also been seen in the district at that very hour; of Mrs Hellings’s odd behaviour; of Mr Simms, the schoolteacher who had been the poor child’s employer and who was hated by all the area for his unkindness and his equally harsh wife and how they had bullied the girl between them. I also reminded him of the findings at the Inquest; the rumours that Miss Hellings had not been the innocent she had appeared – the tale in short of a lover (very possibly a man of some standing in the parish) who had cruelly seduced and ruined her.

“Yes,” he said. “The newspapers will have their little entertainments. I can’t say as I approve, though they have their uses at times. In my opinion, Miss Hellings and her family have seen enough trouble without being made the objects of the country’s curiosity.”

I recalled to him the duty to inform the public owned by lowly writers such as myself and said that if he was so sure there was no mystery, did he not have information with which to reassure those who went in fear of a murderer at large that the matter was now safely in his hands?

“Just tell them not to worry, Mr Moore,” said Sergeant Cuff. “Can you do that? If not, tell ‘em whatever you choose. That’s your business – if you’d be so good as to leave me to go about mine.”

 

Some time later, to my surprise, I received certain documentation from the Great Man himself, which I piece together for you now – a letter to myself, and extracts from the casebook of Sergeant Cuff (as edited by F. A. Moore):

 

\- Questioned the Mother: Lucy left at 3.20 (after noon). Said she had informed Mother of engagement to Mr. Samuel Birt, baker of Lower Atherton. Said Mr. Alf. Randall had been present. Mr. Randall childhood friend of Lucy. As to her tears and fainting fits, that was only natural in a grieving mother.

\- Questioned Mr. Randall: In state, could have been in a struggle. Further question: whereabouts between four and five? Answer: at his mother’s house. Any other alibi? None.

\- Questioned Mrs Randall: Very nervous, highly strung. Sure of her son’s being home at that hour. 

\- Questioned Mr Birt: (seen by various customers, apprentices etc. etc. all that afternoon). Left the building for no more than five minutes at a time. Lower Atherton five miles from scene of death.

\- Questioned Mr and Mrs Simms: still in the school room. Seen by parents and three unruly pupils kept back for detention. 

Notes: Lord H— (seen in district). No connection to the case whatsoever – lost, and reluctant to admit it. Eventually asked for directions by Grange Farm. Seen heading west towards Yetterley half an hour before matter in question. 

 

Conclusion – inevitable. But is there sufficient proof?

 

From the letter:

_In view of your questions and kind interest in the case, I thought perhaps you might like to hear that, following up on the above notes (the conclusion of which is no mystery, I think you must now agree), I found one Mr. Alf. Randall to be in possession of a scarf identical to that worn by Miss Hellings and a brooch (given to her by her grandmother; cheap but distinctive). The scarf was also covered in long fair hairs (Mr Randall and his mother are Dark-Haired). Lucy Hellings was fair._

_So now you will see that I was keeping no grand secrets of the case from you. It was only ever a story of the kind that is too often heard of in this unhappy life of ours. Mr Randall, having wrongly counted on one day marrying Miss Hellings himself acted in selfish Anger to prevent anyone else doing so. It was wickedness, such as this world is too full of, but wickedness that will now be paid in full; small comfort that is to Mrs Hellings or Mrs Randall or young Mr Birt; and the poor child who can hope now only for better things in the next world. Neither of us, wield our chosen weapons as we will, can return life to the death, and that’s a sad fact we all must live with._

_So, Mr. Moore, let your pen make what it will of the tale but I hope you will find it in you to have some mercy when you relate it to the public._

 

~0~

 

Following this generous correspondence, I made a further visit to Sergeant Cuff at his home. I was admitted, at which he said, in amazement; was I back again and whatever could I want this time? 

I handed over the article with which my readers will by now no doubt be familiar – a piece on the character and fate of the poor girl, with a rough portrait done from remembrances of her friends and family, and said that perhaps restoring life to the dead was too great a claim, but I could extend memory here and there.

“Not bad – better than most of its kind,” he said, which from him I took to be high praise indeed and immediately set to questioning him about his latest investigations at which he point, he begged me to question him no more and asked me to leave – unless I had learned since any reliable methods of dealing with the greenfly, or (sadder still) mildew on a dog rose. 

However, readers, as you have already learned, I am not one to be easily turned aside from a purpose and I am resolved that one of my tasks in this life must be to immortalise the good Sergeant himself – who among us is more deserving of that honour?

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't take very much from _The Suspicions of Mr Whicher_ (in the end, I think Sergeant Cuff is very much his own character, despite the influence of the Road murder), but does take something from _The Invention of Murder_ by Judith Flanders. (Which, if you haven't read, you might also enjoy; it being an account of the Victorians' love affair with murder/detection.)


End file.
